No 5
by Firdre
Summary: A speakeasy in a big city run by a mysterious man in a mask. A pretty but destitute young singer finds employment. A handsome heir finds love. Rather a disaster, really. Prohibition-era America AU. Not so much E/C or R/C as constant conflict between both. (This fic is also on AO3.)
1. Chapter 1

Many nights were rainy that year—not as frigid as they had been previously, but with torrential downpours. Her coat was too thin, her scarf too short, and her hat heavy with water. She'd have to talk to her employer. Reticent as he could be, he had told her in no uncertain terms that if there was something she needed, she should inform him of it straight away. She didn't care about the way the clothing looked, but she did care about not contracting some sort of dreadful illness and dying. Or worse, being unable to sing. After all, her voice was the only thing keeping her employed. She was not saucy, she hadn't the foggiest clue how one made a martini, and she certainly wasn't proficient enough as a dancer.

So, indeed, death and voicelessness were entirely off the table.

The lights were not up yet, but Gabriel, the doorman, was standing outside. She unwrapped her sodden silk scarf from her neck as he opened the door and gave him the warmest smile she could muster with numb extremities.

"Evening, miss." he said in his rough low voice. She nodded as she went past him. She was early, as usual, and headed towards her employer's office. It was concealed at the very back of the building, and was as opulent as such a thing could be. It was all mahogany and red velvet and dark, heavy curtains behind which she wasn't even sure there was a window. She'd certainly never seen it.

She knocked, as tentative as ever, and heard a grunt that meant she was allowed in. Perhaps visiting her employer was somewhat more of a habit than she would care to admit. She pushed the heavy door back and again tried to force a smile as she saw him writing at his desk. He looked as sombre and serious as ever and she was instantly and instinctively uneasy. "Good evening, Christine." he said when she had closed the door.

"Hi!" she replied, strolling towards the seat opposite him. "How're you?"

"Well." he said, his voice clipped. "And you, I trust you are well?"

"Yeah," she said, wincing slightly. "But that's also why I'm here."

The masked face tilted upwards towards her. "There is a problem?"

"Oh, not a big deal. It's just, well, in this weather, when I get here I'm freezing, every night, but I can't afford a coat… Not that I want to exceed my rights…"

"Don't give it another thought." he said. She frowned.

"What, I'm just supposed to go freezing? I…"

"No, silly child." he said, inspecting whatever it was he was writing. "I will take care of it. I do not suppose you are in possession of a working umbrella?"

She looked down. "No. Don't worry about that."

"My leading lady is not much use if she cannot sing, now, is she?"

She blinked and wet her lips. "I suppose not. Nevertheless…"

"_I will take care of it._"

And he waved his hand dismissively, returning to his work.

She awkwardly made for the door. As she opened it, he said: "I will be watching this evening. I am not in a mood for being disappointed."

She nodded and went out.

No pressure at all.

x

She sat in her dressing room upstairs—she'd been told by various sleazy gentlemen that the establishment was not unlike a brothel in the way it was set up; the same gentlemen were usually thrown out if their words were overheard by a bartender or doorman—and was attempting to make her hair look elegant. It had a habit of refusing to behave, and that evening was no exception. She thought about the way her employer unashamedly called her "child"—he always had, since they came to an agreement on her employment a few months before—and concluded that perhaps it wasn't a grossly inaccurate term to apply to her. She didn't know much, she hadn't experienced much, and she was hardly the epitome of human strength. She was a lost little girl.

A hairpin slipped from her fingers just as she was about to secure a tendril of hair and she grunted with annoyance, reaching down to pick up the pin and, on the way, hitting her pale forehead on the edge of the table in front of her.

She hissed a curse under her breath and rubbed her forehead vigorously. Sighing, she made a second attempt at securing the same bit of hair, however this time, she succeeded. She took a deep breath, steadied her nerves, and continued. Her first performance of the week was usually accompanied by such nervousness and clumsiness, however she didn't normally bash her head against things. There was a red line forming on her forehead and with another exclamation of irritation she reached for her makeup.

She managed, eventually, after many more curses and twenty minutes of removing foundation paste from her hair, to make herself look vaguely presentable. She slipped off her silk robe—it was a luxurious setup she had, when she really thought about it—and picked up the dress she'd chosen for that night. It was pure white, and simple, but as she slipped it on, she felt elegant and pretty. Next were her simple but heeled shoes—she was much more comfortable in her everyday shoes, but she accepted the obligations of being onstage. She _had_ to be pretty.

But despite that, she was well protected. Her employer was almost absurdly so; he was always quick to weed out unsavoury patrons and ban them for good from the establishment. And when she was in the bar itself, Gabriel watched out for her. As a rule, unless they were friends, men were not allowed to speak to any of the girls who performed. A few times since the beginning of her employment she'd been approached by particularly amorous (and drunken) men—one had even brought a ring when he proposed to her.

She pawned the ring the next morning and was only able to buy a new pair of lace-up shoes.

Her appearance was now as decent as she was going to get it. She moved to sit, but there was a knock at the door.

"Yes?" she asked, suppressing a sigh.

"It's me." said her employer. She went to the door and opened it, smiling slightly. The eyes behind the mask brightened almost imperceptibly. "Hello." he said.

"Hi." she stepped away from the door and returned to her chair. He walked into the room and she noticed the big black umbrella in his hand. She smiled. "That for me?"

"Yes." he said, leaning it against the table beside her. "I wasn't able to find a suitable tailor this late. Tomorrow."

"Thank you." she said sincerely, smiling warmly into the mirror. She watched his reflection reach and tremblingly pat her shoulder. Then, he withdrew.

"You are very welcome. And you are on in fifteen minutes."

And with that, he walked out and closed the door behind him.

x

Her face was hot, her hands were icy, and the adrenalin was so strong in her that she was panting. She bowed her head in thanks and the applause did not subside until she left the stage. Gabriel was waiting for her against the wall nearby, a drink in his hand.

"Amazin', miss." he said. She grinned and shrugged casually.

"Nothing special."

He laid a hand gently on her arm. "Better than this." And he nodded towards the stage from which Christine had just descended.

Carlotta, as she called herself, was taking the stage. She was redheaded, buxom, and perhaps the biggest cow that Christine had ever had the misfortune of encountering. Everything about her was brutal, offensive, as if she was ready to take anyone on for battle at any given moment. She looked haughtily about the room and showed her teeth in something that wasn't what one could easily label a smile. "Hit it," she demanded of the musicians around her in a manner that was almost military. The bright and brassy sound of trumpets blared into the room and Christine winced, signalling to Gabriel that she was going to return to her dressing room upstairs. Gabriel nodded, sipping his drink casually as if the deafening music had no effect on him at all. With one final look at haughty, brutal Carlotta, Christine slipped out of the room.

x

Raoul watched in wonderment as she left. He was quite positive he'd seen her somewhere before—in his dreams, perhaps—and he was completely captivated. That voice—_that voice_—was one of the most spectacular things that he'd heard in a very long time, and he shook his head disbelievingly. The singer onstage now, a middle-aged harpy of a woman, was singing in a voice that, while not unpleasant, was much smokier and much _older_ than the one of the girl who'd just left.

"Sit _down_, Raoul." hissed Philippe, his brother, beside him. Cheeks suddenly flaming, Raoul looked around as he realised that he'd been standing since she finished singing. He sat down and leaned towards Philippe almost conspiratorially.

"Who was she? That girl?" he demanded desperately. "She was incredible."

Philippe rolled his eyes. He was hoping Raoul had skipped the phase of childish infatuation with every pretty girl that caught his eye and moved straight on to the sobriety of middle age. Alas. "Damned if I know, kiddo."

Raoul looked about and without another word to his brother dashed over to the man she'd been talking to. He was forbidding, intimidating, and dressed in shabby clothing. Raoul adjusted his bowtie idly. He cleared his throat and the man looked away from the stage and languidly in his direction. "May I help you with something, sir?" he asked, eyes narrowed. There was no respect or obligation in his voice. Raoul shrank minutely.

"I was wondering what the name of that last singer was. The blonde."

"You'll keep wonderin'." said the man, sipping his drink and turning his head back to the performance.

"Please, sir, I need to know!" Raoul hissed, clasping the man's forearm.

The man shrugged out of Raoul's grip and tilted his head. "We got a problem here?"

"N-No, sir, no disrespect." said Raoul, a sweat breaking out beneath his collar. The man was shorter than him, but muscular and aggressive-looking. He took a step backwards deferentially. "I just… is her name Christine Daaé?"

The man's eyes narrowed further. "Who's askin'?" he spat.

Raoul's eyebrows rose. "That's her? That is Miss Daaé?"

The man did not reply.

"Thank you, sir!" he said brightly, returning without caution to his seat with his brother and their friends.

So delighted was he that he barely noticed when he managed to tip a woman's martini glass all over her.

Philippe apologised profusely to her and grabbed Raoul by his shoulder, dragging him out to the back of the establishment and through the back door. Raoul rubbed his shoulder when Philippe threw him away, taking out his cigarette case. "Have a damn smoke." he demanded, thrusting the open case towards Raoul. He raised his hand to decline. "I wasn't asking."

Raoul took a cigarette and accepted his brother's help in lighting it. Philippe sighed, letting his head droop, and rubbed his forehead. "What the hell was going on in there, kid? You nearly get yourself beaten up and then spill that drink and don't even think to apologise? What's gotten into you tonight?"

His tone was not so much angry as beseeching, and he looked tired—their father had once looked exactly the same way when Raoul had sent a baseball flying through the floor-to-ceiling window of the front room. As he had when he was ten, Raoul bowed his head in apology. "It was Christine." he said quietly, and Philippe groaned.

"You have got to be joking, Raoul."

He looked up with sad eyes.

"Don't even try that look on me, I'm not a dame." To steady himself, Philippe took a long draw on his cigarette and exhaled slowly before speaking again. "I had enough of that girl when you were a kid. I'd really rather not deal with her again."

Raoul frowned. "She's not bad, Philippe. She was my best friend, and I…" He paused. "I…"

"Don't you dare say you're keen on a singer from a speakeasy. Don't even think about it."

He looked down and lifted the cigarette to his lips, sucking the smoke in without inhaling and blowing it out again. He looked at his hands and began picking at his nails.

"Quit it." Philippe barked.

Raoul sighed, feeling subdued, and let his hands fall to his sides. He thought about all the memories of Christine. Of days spent on the beach, nights spent watching summer storms; of telling one another stories and listening to her father playing music; of holding one another's hands as they walked about that little seaside town and—his heart still raced—his first kiss on the day they left each other.

The crisp cold of the air after rain cleared Raoul's head. Did Christine's father even know where his daughter worked? Did he allow it?

He missed her father too—he was a good, kind man, who had charitably tried to teach Raoul the violin when he was a child.

He'd never been a particularly talented musician.

"Gentlemen," said a deep voice from the doorway. There was bright light behind him, preventing either of the Chagny brothers from seeing his face. "I am afraid I must ask you to go inside."

Philippe moved from his place leaning against a wall. "Why is that, sir? We're not bothering anyone."

The tall silhouette tilted his head. "I would very much hate for the authorities to discover that Philippe de Chagny has been engaging in illegal activities."

Raoul watched Philippe. Slowly, he took a last drag on his cigarette and dropped it, stepping on the butt. "Come, Raoul." he said, walking towards the door. He stood in the doorway beside the silhouette and extended his hand. "Ah, it's an honour to finally meet you."

Raoul watched them shake hands. There was something odd about the man's face. His profile was almost lumpy. And there was a shine to the way the light hit his skin. Quietly he followed his brother back through the door, and felt the dark silhouette's eyes on him long after he'd returned to the smoky bar.


	2. Chapter 2

Christine smiled, clasping her hands to her chest with exhilaration and ecstasy—nothing gave her the swelling, joyful feeling in her chest that singing did. The half-hearted applause from the drunken patrons did nothing to dampen the happiness in her, and as she descended the steps of the stage, she directed her smile at the dancers passing her, hips swaying suggestively as they took to the stage. Soon, she'd be forgotten in favour of the tall, beautiful ladies in extravagant costumes, but she didn't mind. She was happy singing for nobody.

She adjusted the skirt of her simple white dress and moved unnoticed through the throng of patrons to the bar. She sat on an unoccupied stool and the bartender grinned at her. "What'll it be tonight, Miss Daaé?"

"Surprise me." she said, knowing as well as the bartender did that she was going to be served iced water with a wedge of lemon, as ever. She sighed with satisfaction as she sipped the water; it was hot and close in the room and there was smoke everywhere—something she had complained openly about to her employer. But he had told her that to prohibit smoking would be, at first, to deny his own values as a glorified bootlegger (this with a slight smile), and secondly, to lose most of his loyal patrons. But, he said, there wasn't much damage that could be done. Truly she did not mind all that much; she was only there a few hours each night.

"Good evening, miss!"

What she minded more was being approached by drunken men. She gave a tight smile without looking up at whoever was addressing her.

"You were wonderful tonight." said whoever it was, placing his hand on the bar beside her. There was sincerity in the compliment, and her smile became more genuine; she looked up to see a tall, handsome, blonde young man grinning at her. But his eyes—she tried not to sigh—looked too bright and glazed for him to be sober. She nodded thanks.

He looked deflated.

"Do forgive me if it's too forward…"

Not _another_ marriage proposal.

"Forgive _me_, sir," she said, putting up her hand to cut him off. "But I am not much in the mood to talk to strangers—of course, I do not mean to be rude, but I am very tired."

And she looked earnestly into his eyes to prove her point. He looked hurt and shuffled dejectedly away as Christine returned to her glass of water.

x

Meg and Sorelli were dancers; as such, Christine had no official reason to interact with them, but they were kind and both were holed up in the dressing room beside hers. They were as different as different could be: Meg was theatrical, brazen, she adored being on any sort of stage and being lavished with attention was perhaps the greatest joy of her life. She had a big family, though she didn't know her father and was an only child; she was always talking about this or that cousin or new uncle or aunt. She entertained men, 'sugar daddies', she was fond of calling them, and was tipped handsomely every time she danced. There was a natural brightness to everything that she did, and with long, sultry, black curls and violet eyes, she was very beautiful indeed.

Sorelli, on the other hand, was more mature and sensible, with no family to speak of. She was six years older than Meg and seven years older than Christine, and had been a ballerina before she had decided to take a break and, naturally, seek work in an establishment of ill repute dancing for drunkards. She was tall and willowy with striking green eyes and beautiful, rich red hair. She was superstitious and a true veteran of the stage; she had danced with all the greats of the last decade and had even been in Swan Lake. She had a picture of her long-dead mother on her vanity—she, too, had been a dancer—and would seem unromantic were it not for the fact that there was only ever one man she seemed to give any attention to at all. Christine did not know the man's name, but she had seen him about—he was very tall and robust with mouse-brown hair, fine clothing, and a stern, yet kindly, face. Meg told Christine often that Sorelli and the man were deeply in love.

After her run-in with the young man in the bar that night, Christine sat tiredly in her dressing room. In truth, she could leave any time she liked now, but it was cold outside, and there was a heaviness in her bones preventing her from getting up and changing.

Meg burst through the door, followed casually by Sorelli, and the two of them set to work unpinning their hair and using the backs of their wrists to rub off their makeup, resulting in them looking very similar to raccoons. Christine sat up.

"Thanks for knocking." she said, crossing her arms. Meg laughed loudly and helped herself to a cloth sitting on Christine's vanity.

"Any time, sweet cheeks."

Sorelli gave Christine a long, appraising look. She felt self-conscious under the gaze of those bright green eyes, and looked away.

"Did I see you chatting with a certain younger brother of a friend of mine?" she asked at length. Christine frowned.

"You may have seen me getting rid of someone…" she lowered her eyelids haughtily, and added proudly: "Myself."

Meg and Sorelli looked at one another.

"But you know who that someone was, right?" asked Meg. Christine's brow furrowed and she shook her head slowly. "Gosh, Christine, you can be a dumb Dora sometimes."

Sorelli smacked the back of Meg's head lightly. "Don't be mean." She turned to Christine with a maternal look in her green eyes. "You know my Philippe, don't you? That was his brother. I don't remember his name... but he's a real goof. Sweet goof, though. Been to lunch with the two of them a few times. He's very quiet."

Suddenly Christine felt as if she'd been hit by a freight train. It was, of course, perfectly possible that there was more than one blonde young man of twenty-two years who had a severe older brother named Philippe.

It was possible too that a boy she'd loved years ago had seen fit to walk casually back into her life.

Both were possibilities.

"'Scuse me." said Christine, suddenly finding herself with ample energy. She tried to look casual as she bolted for the door, resulting in an awkward loping walk that made her still more self-conscious than she had suddenly started feeling a moment before.

She moved down the stairs as quietly as she could—in the bar it was quiet, and there was only the sound of someone playing piano with a single plaintive trumpet over the top of it. She stood in the doorway and looked around for him, not without desperation. But he wasn't there. Neither was his brother.

Disappointment welled in the pit of her stomach.

He'd be back, surely.

He had to be.

x

For God's sake.

Raoul was moping—what else was new?—about that girl he'd approached at No. 5 that night. Philippe was tired of it; if a broad rejected you, you were supposed to accept it and choose another one to go after. That was not even necessarily the _Chagny_ way: it was simply the done thing. After all, Raoul was handsome enough, and quite charming when he wasn't too busy being morose and thoughtful. It wasn't that he wasn't a happy young man, but he was comfortable in his own company. Philippe wondered often what went on in that head of his.

"It isn't the end of the world." Philippe told Raoul, removing his hat as they walked into the front door of their house on the outskirts of the city.

"You don't understand." insisted Raoul. Philippe let out an audible sigh.

"If I had a nickel for every time you told me that, kiddo."

Raoul shucked off his coat angrily. "You know you're always 'encouraging' me to go after ladies?"

Philippe raised his eyebrows expectantly.

"She's the only one…"

"Oh my _God._" Philippe exclaimed, slapping his forehead. "You don't even know her, Raoul. From the sound of things that's mutual."

Raoul untied his bowtie and sat on the first step of the staircase, untying his shoes. Philippe remembered that he was only twenty-two—an adult as far as the law was concerned, but still a child in his older brother's eyes. Their father's death had been hard on him, and of course he'd recovered, but he was sheltered, and it had imbued him with an innocence that was rare these days. Philippe wondered whether he had it in him at all to romance a girl; as likely as not the girl would end up making him blush rather than the other way around.

"She'll remember me. She didn't see me properly. It was dark."

"All the broads in these joints are the same, kiddo."

Philippe watched his little brother narrowing his eyes. "What if I said that about Sorelli? You'd be furious."

"Sorelli is… she is…"

"_Different._" Raoul hissed, standing up, barefoot, and picking up his shoes. "Of _course_." And he stormed up the stairs.

Philippe had to try very, very hard not to laugh.

x

Raoul allowed a few weeks to pass without returning to the 'juice joint', as Philippe liked to call it sometimes. Half of it was simple lack of motivation to go out—this was a problem that had plagued him after years of having nothing to do but talk to vacuous rich people that he didn't find interesting whenever he left the house—and half of it was, in truth, humiliation. He did not want to go back and find that Christine truly did not know him—or worse, did not care for him at all, and—oh, it couldn't be!—had someone else. He couldn't bear the thought of her seeing him as a foolish little boy, like so many other people did, and denying him.

Those intervening weeks were filled with memories—sweet for their distance—of those few months they'd had together as children. The year had been 1913, and to a then thirteen year old boy, the world had been bright and fascinating and new, and he'd felt like a man, a true man, exploring this world that, as far as he was concerned, belonged to him. And it was a bright, gusty day when he had put on his worst clothes and run down from their huge house at the beachside to the water's edge, feeling the salt in the wind and the sun in his eyes. His hair, which his sister Josephine had spent all morning styling, was ruffled and being whipped about by the wind. Even as he sat in his room, he could still feel the scorch of the sun and the salt of the air. He was born for the coast, for the ocean.

At first he thought the music was in his head, as if he'd walked onto the stage of some play about mermaids and sailors. The voice was captivating and beautiful and he realised that the wind must have been carrying it from somewhere.

With reckless abandon he bolted down the beach; he made it about two hundred yards before he tumbled over a root sticking out from the ground.

He ripped his trousers at the knee and cried out as he flew through the air, eventually landing face first on the ground, his mouth and eyes filling with sand.

He coughed and spluttered and suddenly knew where the music was coming from, because now it had stopped. Two figures were moving towards him, saying things that he couldn't quite hear, and he blinked now, his eyes streaming to clear themselves. He tried to clear his suddenly painfully dry throat and felt a hand on his back that pulled him to his feet.

"Christine," said a man's baritone, "Go and pour this boy some water."

He reached to rub his eyes and the man stopped him. "You don't want to do that, son, you'll make it worse."

Raoul managed to make out a nose, two eyebrows, and a smiling mouth set in a tanned face. The eyes were dark and the hair was a coppery brown. He tried to smile back.

"There you are, lad."

The smaller figure—now, he could see, she was a blonde girl a little younger than him—returned and offered him a tin cup. He took it gratefully and took in a mouthful of water. He swilled it about and turned away from them to spit the sandy muck out on the ground. His vision was mostly back and he handed the girl the cup. "Thank you," he said, "I'm very sorry for interrupting."

"Nonsense." laughed the man.

"Join us!" said the girl, grabbing his hand and dragging him over to their picnic spot. The man, who he assumed was her father, had watched silently and not protested. Raoul, for his part, had been confused and disoriented and allowed himself to be led by that strange, pretty blonde girl.

That first day had been wonderful. Christine—she was eleven, with all the enthusiasm of a particularly energetic (and, thinking back, particularly adorable) puppy—asked constantly if he was all right, and shoved food into his hands whenever possible. Something he'd noticed was that there was not much. He came to learn, of course, that the two of them lived by very modest means. A few times he brought his savings (which he collected in a tin that his father had once used to house combs and hairbrushes) to Christine's father and insisted that he take them, but he refused, and Christine did the same.

Perhaps that, Raoul now mused in his bedroom, was why she was working in that place. They hadn't any money, and surely Mr Daaé was getting on in years, so she had to work to support them. It was understandable. He didn't like that she was working in that place. But he understood.

"Raoul, are you dressed?" shouted Philippe from downstairs.

"I'm not heading out!" Raoul replied with a petulant sigh that he was glad Philippe would not here.

"Sorelli is here, come and be polite."

His heart sank—she had probably spoken to Christine.

He opened the door to his bedroom and looked at Philippe and Sorelli together at the bottom of the staircase. They were happy, and while the term 'going steady' could not be readily applied, Raoul knew they had feelings for each other. Both were tall, handsome, and confident, and he felt every bit the silly little boy he hated being. Sorelli smiled up at him. Her hair was done immaculately and she was dressed in a beautiful long gown that Raoul suspected Philippe had bought for her. Rings gleamed on her long, elegant fingers.

"Where've you been hiding yourself, fella?"

Raoul put his hands in his pockets. "I'm sure I haven't been missed much."

"Actually…"

Philippe put his hand on the small of Sorelli's back to detain her, but she shrugged off his touch and ascended the stairs slowly and casually, her dancer's grace and natural confidence making Raoul feel rather like he was being approached by a predator. "I have a friend who's been despairing of your absence. She seems to be carrying a torch for you, actually."

Raoul didn't let himself hope. "I doubt I'm interested."

Philippe sighed very audibly from the bottom of the stairs.

Sorelli raised her well-sculpted eyebrows. "Someone's a negative Nellie today! I think you might be if you knew who she was."

At this he brightened almost imperceptibly. "Well… what am I meant to do?"

Sorelli glanced down at Philippe, who was pulling out his watch impatiently. "Tell you what, you come back to the club on Saturday night and I'll arrange for you to meet her in her dressing room."

Raoul's face contorted into a ridiculous look of scandal. "I couldn't do that!"

"Trust me." Sorelli said after a leisurely pause in which she inspected the rings on her right hand. "Bring flowers."

And she descended the staircase in the same manner that she'd come up, leaving Raoul to imagine what sort of hussy his brother's flame was going to try to set him up with.

When they were gone, he returned to his room in silence.

x


	3. Chapter 3

x

Raoul had watched Christine with a bittersweet feeling welling in his chest. She was absolutely wonderful that night; there was a radiance to her when she sang that was completely endearing and Raoul remembered how fondly he'd loved her as a child. She was not a sister, and he'd never seen her that way. The day he'd kissed her, timid though he was, he'd known. And, sitting in that smoky bar, watching her shine onstage, he knew as strongly and completely as always.

The pleasure, perhaps, was dimmed slightly by the fact that not once did she look at him, but a young man who is falling in love is not much in a position to be picky.

Sorelli approached him and leaned down to say simply into his ear, "Go," and as instructed, he left the bar to go up the stairs in another part of the building. He wasn't stopped, but he did feel eyes on him as he approached the dressing room door he'd been instructed to hide behind. Looking about, he dismissed the feeling as nothing—he couldn't see anyone. As Sorelli had told him to, he brought a bouquet of white carnations which were held together with a light blue ribbon. He sighed as he walked in, leaving the door ajar, and looked into the vanity mirror to adjust his hair. The dressing room was commonplace, and, while not austere, lacked the opulence that he would have expected of a place such as this. A silk robe was thrown over the arm of a green couch and Raoul noticed that there was no sort of arrangement to the way the room was designed—everything was a different colour and shape and there were different sorts of wood used in the table of the vanity and the chair in front of it. He sighed and for the fiftieth time imagined which of the girls employed here he was going to have to offer a weak apology to and then leave. It was nothing personal, of course, he simply did not want any involvement with any girl, with only one exception. Was it going to be some voluptuous brunette with a determined pout and wandering hands? A redhead like Sorelli who had too many teeth in her smile and too much colour on her lips? A clever girl who cracked wise and laughed at his innocence?

It was all very distressing to consider.

x

Christine had been detained by Sorelli who seemed intent upon telling her every detail of the night out she'd had with _her Philippe_ earlier in the week. It was not that Christine didn't care—Sorelli was, of course, a dear friend of hers—but she was very tired and wanted to go to her room, change, and leave. She'd spent a laborious few hours before she came to the establishment cooking so that she'd actually have something to eat upon getting home for once and was looking forward to her—admittedly meagre—meal. Her employer passed her as she went to go upstairs, which was odd, as she normally didn't see him outside his office. She smiled at him and he simply nodded.

"D'you watch tonight?" she asked. His mouth twitched.

"I did. I was impressed."

Her mouth curled into a grin. "Really?"

He gave an uncomfortable grimace, as if what he was about to say was painful even to think of. "You were… the bee's knees."

Her laughter was almost loud enough to disturb the performance nearby.

"Gee, thanks." she punched his shoulder, grinning.

He looked disquieted and almost displeased and continued towards his office without another word to her.

She sighed happily until she saw the door to her dressing room, at which her eyes widened. It was always—_always_—closed when she wasn't in there, and she realised with horror that someone must be inside; there was the sound of footsteps from within.

She looked about desperately for a weapon and spied, fortuitously, an empty vase sitting on an end table at the end of the hallway. She crept over, retrieved it, and went back to her doorway. She saw the black of a man's formalwear within and steeled herself before throwing the door open and entering with a great cry.

"Christine!"

The wind went out of her like a balloon suddenly let go by a child.

"Raoul?"

They saw one another; she took in a breath, and hopelessly lost for words, let it out just as quickly. Her free hand went to her mouth and she simply looked at him, unable to properly form a sentence. What was there to say?

Raoul blinked a few times, not entirely certain that he was not imagining things. There she stood, as radiant and as beautiful as she'd been on the stage, and that feeling of certainty welled in him again. It did not cross his mind that Sorelli had cunningly arranged this and knew all the time, somehow, that they would recognise each other. Too busy was he, of course, remembering what joy felt like.

The moment lengthened.

Christine shook her head as if to clear it and, as casually as she possibly could, set the vase down on the couch nearby. She tucked a tendril of her hair that had escaped behind her ear and looked up at him, hoping to have collected herself, but she fell apart again when the strength of all those memories that had been brewing in her mind hit her yet again.

Raoul remembered the flowers in his hand.

"Oh!" he expelled, thrusting them at her perhaps a little violently in his fervour. "I… er, well, I…"

She took them, gently, and smiled, her heart pounding. "Thank you." she said softly. Raoul awkwardly laced his hands together in front of him, remembering it was poor form to put one's hands in one's pockets in polite company, as Josephine always said.

She was still smiling.

"Hello." he managed, dumbly, to say.

She laughed, and her eyes were warm. "Hi. Look, about the other week—"

He put his hands out to stop her. "No, honestly, it—"

"—see, you just look so—"

"—and you don't need to worry, I mean—"

"—if it helps, I—"

Both stopped.

They smiled together.

Neither was quite certain how it happened, but the next moment they had their arms wrapped around one another and were laughing with relief.

They pulled away, but did not take their hands off each other.

"I thought you'd forgotten me." Raoul said, chewing his lower lip as he continued to grin at her.

She looked down in embarrassment. "I thought you were a drunk."

"Not yet." he said warmly. His hands were on her back, and she felt their heat on her skin through her showy dress.

"I'm glad that you're here." she said, and at last stepped away from him. "I was thinking you'd left for good after I was so rude to you."

Was that a blush she saw creeping across his face? "I wouldn't dream of it." he said.

She smiled ruefully. "I guess you didn't think if we met up again it'd be in a place like this."

He grinned playfully and touched her arm with ease. "Well, Miss Daaé," And he turned his face into a false, pouting frown. "Where _is_ your father in all this?"

It was as if the air in the room turned to ice.

She blinked and bit her lip hard. She swallowed, and told him simply: "He's dead."

His eyes nearly bugged out of his head.

"… Oh." he said after a moment.

Both looked off in different directions awkwardly.

"I'm sorry." he said, and in his desperation he put his hand on her shoulder.

To his great relief, she did not push him away.

"It isn't your fault." she told him, leaning into his hand. He patted her shoulder as consolingly as he could. She fought back her tears.

"How did—oh, no, I'm sorry, I…"

"He got sick." she said. "When I was about thirteen. He went downhill pretty quickly."

"I'm sorry." he repeated. She was still looking away from him, at the ground, and now she shrugged off his arm, bending to pick up the vase. He felt the joyfulness slipping out of him. The news about Mr Daaé hurt him, and the thought that he was so insensitive added insult to injury.

"Anyway," she said, sniffing. "We'll have to do lunch or something, we have a lot to catch up on. You married yet?"

She wasn't facing him. He took in a breath and said: "No."

He watched her square her slim shoulders. "Engaged then?"

He frowned. "No."

She turned to him with a coquettish smile. "The young millionaire Raoul de Chagny can't even find someone to go steady with?"

His mouth twitched upwards. She sniffed again. "No." he said.

"Good." he thought he heard her say.

"I keep making an idiot of myself in front of you." he said, and she smiled.

"You sure are a professional goof. Nothing's changed."

He felt that sense of daring that had made him keep his arms around her returning to him. "Would you like to have a drink with me?" He put on his most charming smile.

She took a deep breath. "Let me just change into something else first? It's too late at night to be all dolled up."

He nodded, still grinning at her. Slowly, he turned to go out the door.

"Hey—" she said. He turned back to her. "Thanks for the flowers," Here she paused and took in his appearance before meeting his eyes. "Raoul."

His smile widened to the point where she thought his face might split in two. "You're welcome, Christine."

And he left.

x

Erik allowed relationships between his employees and, well, whoever they chose. He made it clear that they were to focus on their jobs when they were in his establishment, but as far as he was concerned, what they did in their own lives was up to them.

But he refused to have some grinning idiot of an interloper taking Christine's attention away from—

From her work.

He watched the boy walk downstairs and wondered whether it would be imprudent to enter Christine's dressing room so soon after the boy had left. Of course, he had precious little time to decide and, being the man he was, he approached and rapped sharply three times on the door.

"I told you, I'll be down in a—oh."

She shrugged on her blouse, which had been hanging off one shoulder. Erik swallowed around a sudden lump in his throat as he tried not to let his eyes wander to the soft white of her flesh as she buttoned it casually. He blinked a few times and tightened his hands into fists.

"I do not want you drinking." he said. She frowned.

"Were you listening to that?" she said as she nodded in the direction of the staircase, and he knew she was horrified. He shook his head hastily.

"I was passing by—at the end of the hall, I was talking to one of my pianists—and I noticed that one of my vases was missing."

He almost sighed with relief as he crossed his arms and she looked down apologetically, turning into the room to fetch it, and handing it to him sheepishly. "I thought I had an intruder." she said, and he raised his eyebrow.

"An intruder who left flowers and asked you to drink with him?"

Her mouth curled into an adorable smile and he found it harder with each passing second to remain cross with her. "He's an old friend. He's come here a few times—Raoul de Chagny?"

So that was the name of the foolish little boy who wanted to seduce Christine away from him.

"Ah, yes, the brother of Sorelli's irritating lover, is it?"

She chuckled. "That's the one."

He grew serious and looked right into her sparkling blue eyes. "May I tell you something?"

"Sure." she said.

"Sorelli is a talented dancer, but she has rather a reputation for being—how to put this kindly?—well, loose. It would be very easy for such an unpleasant title to spread to someone even as morally sound as yourself… should you fall in with the wrong people."

She arched an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

"I am simply informing you that if you care for your reputation—and consequently, of course, your current guarantee of employment at this establishment—you will not go and drink with that boy. You will put on your coat, take your umbrella, and go home."

She frowned at him. "Are you threatening me?"

He didn't answer her.

"I—well, I—" She huffed. "Fine."

And she closed the door in Erik's face. He let the breath go out of his lungs and slowly descended the stairs. Since they had met strange feelings stirred in his chest when she was near; even when she wasn't and he thought of her there was a fluttering in his chest that confused and angered him. He returned to his office; acoustically it was perfectly situated such that nobody could hear what went on in there when the door was shut, but he could hear very clearly into Christine's dressing room. It was nothing perverse, of course, he simply enjoyed listening to her sing to herself.

And perhaps wanted to hear if she mentioned him to her friends.

But, of late, she had started talking more and more about petty feminine things—her appearance, her hair, which man had become interested in whom. He expected more of her. And in truth, he was disappointed that she'd succumbed to such vacuous things. But he leaned back in his chair in satisfaction nonetheless, content in the knowledge that she would not go and drink with that irritating little nuisance. For a while longer, at least, he would be able to hold onto her. He certainly did not have the strength or the goodness to let her go.

x

Christine told herself time and again that she wouldn't look into the bar, she wouldn't think of how upset Raoul would be, and she certainly wouldn't go and apologise for having to leave. In the few moments it took her to get herself together to leave for home, she assured herself that she would do what she had to in order to keep her job. That was paramount. Catching up with an old friend could wait until a day off.

That was until she saw him sitting in the bar chatting excitedly with the bartender, blue eyes bright with delight.

She very nearly groaned.

He turned and his mouth formed into the most dazzling smile.

She dug her fingernails into her palms.

And, against her better judgment, walked towards him. She kept her fists clenched until her palms were stinging.

"Hi," she said, already smiling apologetically. "Look, I lost track of time—I've really got to go."

His smile drooped. "Oh. Of course. Well, I…" he pulled out his pocket watch. "I could walk you home."

She took a steadying deep breath. "That's not necessary." And added, cursorily, "Mr de Chagny."

He raised an eyebrow, glanced at the bartender and the door, and pulled a wad of money out of the inside of his jacket, putting it on the bar without finishing his drink. Christine felt a thrill and wasn't entirely sure why.

"Well," he said, slowly, standing and moving to the coat rack by the doorway and picking his up, slipping it on, and moving back to her. "I guess there isn't much point in my staying."

Christine noticed the bartender watching their exchange intently. She swallowed. "Guess not." she replied. "But it sure was swell to see you."

Raoul gave her a quizzical look. "Well, uh… goodnight."

They were facing one another in the doorway. After a pause, she smiled and nodded. "Goodnight."

And she went out the front door.

Raoul glanced at the bartender who was staring at him as he cleaned glasses. He lifted two fingers to his forehead and saluted the bartender—he'd not been in the armed forces—before tugging on his dark coloured scarf and going out the door himself. It was a freezing night. He decided to start walking until he was able to find a cab. Choosing to head left, he shoved his hands in his pockets and hoped Christine was getting home safely.

One may imagine his surprise when he found abruptly that she was walking beside him.

He let out an "_Oh!_" and she shook her head.

"You sap." she said, rubbing her forehead as if to rid herself of a headache brought on by his idiocy.

Raoul wondered what had gone on in those short minutes that they were separated. "You're not getting a cab?"

"Obviously I'm going to bum yours." she said with a smile.

"Obviously." he replied disbelievingly.

Fortuitously, a taxi came along the road, and Raoul stepped out to flag it down. It pulled to a stop in front of them and he opened the door for Christine. She grinned as she climbed in. "My hero." she said.

He smiled warmly at her as he shut the door behind them. Christine gave her address to the driver, who nodded and remained silent. She placed her hand on the seat between them casually. Raoul looked at it like it was a snake. "I'm sorry about asking about your father earlier." he said. She shook her head vehemently.

"I'm in a good mood tonight, let's talk about it another time."

The implication that there was going to be another time made Raoul smile, and timidly he laid his hand on top of hers. To his great relief, she didn't pull hers away.

"You don't drink?" he said after a pause.

"I don't drink." she said.

"Something about not consuming your own product?"

She looked offended. "I'm no bootlegger!"

The driver cleared his throat.

"Sorry." he said, and she held his hand. "The drink didn't work out, so… are you free for lunch tomorrow?"

Christine frowned and looked away. His thumb rubbed circles on the back of her palm. She imagined that her employer's threat of dismissal wasn't a temporary one. But—she looked at him, and he was still smiling that gentle smile that had always made her weak at the knees—she wasn't going to abandon her chance of being around her dearest friend.

"Not tomorrow." she said, and he deflated a little. "Next week, perhaps."

"Next week." he repeated. His nod was so enthusiastic that some of his hair flopped onto his face and he took his hand away from hers to push it away. She giggled. "I'm going to hold you to that." he said.

Her heart sank.

They spent the rest of the ride in comfortable silence, hands resting closely together on the seat between them. When they arrived, Christine pulled out her coin purse. Raoul placed his hand on hers once again, this time to detain her. She furrowed her eyebrows in an expression that Raoul had to fight very hard not to kiss away.

"I thought you were bumming a ride." he said. She laughed again.

"Just promise you'll never use that word ever again. You're too upper crust for it." she said as he slid out of the taxi, holding the door open for her. She smiled at him and they stood facing each other again, thinking precisely the same thing but being too timid to act.

She bit her lip and looked down in a purposefully endearing expression.

Raoul felt his cheeks flush. Perfect timing, as ever.

Slowly she looked up at him again. She remembered perfectly the way he had looked after the first time they'd kissed. The resemblance between that boy and the man before her was rather striking. She wondered why she hadn't seen it before.

She remembered the way his lips had felt; she remembered the warmth and safety of her hand in his and she wanted very much to kiss him again. Nine years was quite long enough to wait.

"I hope you won't disappear again." she said quietly. He tilted his head, smiling slightly, and placed his hand on her arm.

"I have no plans to." he said, and again both hoped for something else.

"Do I need to leave you two alone?" demanded the driver caustically from inside the car, and the moment passed. Raoul shot the driver an apologetic glance and grinned once more at Christine before climbing back into the cab.

"I'll see you soon." he said, and she clasped his hand before stepping away.

"Soon." she replied. "I'm going to hold you to that."

She stood out in the freezing cold on the street long after the cab was gone.


	4. Chapter 4

Raoul dreamed vividly for the next week—and managed to force himself to stay away, lest he make Christine think he was some sort of love-struck moron. Some nights he would dream of her and her father, on the beach when they were children, laughing and singing as only they could. One night he dreamed of her clothed entirely in white, glowing radiantly, like an angel, beckoning him to come to her arms, and another he dreamed of darkness that choked him and hid her from his sight.

He woke the morning after the last in a cold sweat, bedclothes tangled about his legs, and one arm hanging, haphazard and completely numb, from the side of his bed. It was a day on which he planned to go to the establishment, and he suddenly felt madly inadequate. He thought of Christine: he couldn't decide whether she truly was effortlessly beautiful all the time, or whether she simply seemed beautiful to him, no matter what.

He tried not to groan at himself. Love-struck moron indeed.

Early in the afternoon, when he'd bathed, dressed, and taken lunch with Philippe—who seemed, incidentally, to be nursing rather a terrible hangover—he went out into their garden. The gardener was a silent, sober old man whom Raoul very rarely saw. But apparently he was good; bulging, rich roses of all colours bloomed everywhere, despite the recent wet weather. Christine had been proficient with flower language, and he knew nothing: on her twelfth birthday, shortly before they parted ways, he had decided to give her a posy of candy tuft, and she had seemed offended. After an evening in the library he had discovered with not a little horror that such a flower meant indifference, and he was furious at himself. The next day, however, he remedied it with a proper bouquet—tied painstakingly with a ribbon—of bluebells and white camellias, which Christine had received much more warmly, even though she was cool to him for days on end afterward.

He did not wish to make the same mistake twice.

He went back into the house and searched for the book which had informed him as a boy, which he found in the library. Silently he thanked Heaven for Philippe's love of order, and ventured out to the garden again. White carnations seemed to fit his purpose in message, however he could not find them anywhere. He managed to find daffodils, however to express to her that he felt he was in unrequited love felt stupid and dramatic.

In a moment of self-consciousness, he folded his arms. He was in a garden searching for the right flowers for a girl that had been out of his life entirely for ten years. Of course he felt stupid and dramatic.

He found forget-me-nots. One did not have to be a genius to read their message.

They weren't pretty enough. He was hardly going to stop her from looking at him like a little boy if he turned up to her performance with a handful of wilted tiny blue flowers like that.

He plucked a small bunch from the stem and fiddled with it as he continued to search.

It was odd to think of Christine—Sorelli, he remembered, had said something about her 'carrying a torch', yet he couldn't see her, gorgeous, wonderful Christine, caring about an awkward idiot she used to play with as a child. He remembered the look in her eyes when she had rejected him, without a second thought. She hadn't remembered him. And it was a horrifying thought.

But, he made himself think, she'd wanted to go to lunch with him. She had asked if he was married.

He wondered.

x

One thing he could say about Christine was that she did not share his cautious ways. She had shamelessly left with the boy—did she think him some sort of drooling, slack-jawed idiot?—and caught a cab with him. Alone.

He would be lying if he said he was not furious with her. That whole night, as he sat in the freezing cold, his fingers had twitched with the desire to wring the boy's neck. Christine was lucky that she lived alone and needed someone to watch out for her—otherwise he'd have been extremely tempted to follow the boy and make sure he did not return.

Truthfully, he did not mind Philippe de Chagny—he was a responsible, if occasionally decadent, man. He gave him about as much regard as he did any other high-paying patron. But the brother.

_The brother._

He filled him with rage. Such a symbol of what was wrong with the country: so young and naïve and lazy, expecting the world to bring him whatever he wished at the click of his fingers, expecting to rob hardworking men of what was rightfully theirs… It made his blood boil, and what was more, who was to say that he would not become too attached to Christine and incessantly harass her? Christine was a fragile young woman, and would not know what to do in such a situation. He would prey upon her, and leave her irreversibly damaged.

Damage to Christine, however potential, he could not abide by.

As if penitent, she arrived at the establishment much earlier for the rest of the week. It would be four thirty in the afternoon and he would hear the front door open and close, and she would come to his office a moment or two later. It gave him a thrill, and she brought a Dewar flask of hot tea with her, and two tin mugs which she told him her father left her.

There was peace between them then: he could not bring himself to remain angry with her when she sought out his company and so charmingly smiled and laughed.

"Your father was a good man?" he asked her, and delighted in watching her eyes grow bright.

"He was a wonderful man." she said, and her voice was oddly solemn, as if she was speaking in a church. "He was always very good to me. I think you would have liked him."

"A musician? Unless he resembled La Carlotta," here he affected a lilting tone, and she grinned—he knew how much she despised the buxom, redheaded singer, and he would be lying if he said he did not feel the same way. Good singers, however soulless, were hard to come by in this line of work, and he took what he could get. "I am sure I would have liked him very much."

"He would have liked you."

"I doubt that."

He felt himself withdraw—he saw the warmth in her eyes and felt dirty under her gaze for a reason he could not give a name to.

"Very few people like me." he said, and to give himself something to do reached for his cigarette case, before remembering her distaste for the scent of tobacco. She nodded without approval, seeing what he was doing, and he lit one, slowly lifting it to his mouth.

"Me too." she said.

"That is preposterous." he turned his head away and let out a long, slow exhalation of smoke. Mostly the smoking was for show—business partners were warmer when one accepted their proffered cigarette—but it could be therapeutic after a fashion. At least his sense of taste was not strong. "Everyone likes you. It's rather a problem, actually."

She laughed. "Why's that?"

"My doormen have had to begin beating back the amorous gentlemen with sticks."

She threw back her head and let out a laugh that was adorably unladylike. "As if!" she exclaimed, and pouted at him: "Besides, if you let them in, they'd give me more money, wouldn't they?"

He raised an eyebrow, although she could not see. "Do you wish to have another pay rise? That can be done."

"No! No, that's not—I was joking is all."

He looked down for a moment, then back at her. "Is it necessary, though?"

She looked ashamed. "I get by." she said quietly. He made a mental note to make another deposit to her bank account.

"Joking." he repeated. "I'm not very good at that, forgive me."

She smiled, and his heart sped in his chest. Curious—he was only aware of its beating when she was near.

Painfully aware.

"Anyway, I'm going to go get ready." she said, standing and leaving her flask on his desk. He tried very hard to give her what he vehemently hoped could be called a smile. "You going to watch tonight?"

"We shall see." he told her, and she left. He picked up the flask; examined it; he lifted it to his lips and sipped the tea, of which she had tried to hide the bitterness with far too much sugar. Her mouth had no doubt touched the same place before.

He put it back on his desk and lifted the cigarette to his mouth, inhaling, and letting the smoke dissipate, slow and cleansing, from between his lips.

He did not want to admit anything.

There was nothing to admit.

x

Christine stood on the stage, looking out at the audience. She forced herself not to smile at Raoul, who was grinning uncontrollably at her, his friends jostling at his shoulders either side of him. Her eyes drifted down demurely, and she smiled.

When she glanced up again, he waved at her. There was the sound of raucous laughter from the friends.

She took a breath and, as the band struck up behind her, began to sing. She let herself disappear into the way it felt—she was soothed and alive and felt that she was beautiful. Suddenly, her hair was not ghastly bright yellow, but dazzlingly gold. Her eyes were crystals of blue, her skin was purest ivory, and her throat was diamond. She was made from head to toe of riches.

It never lasted long enough. She would sing forever if she could.

All too soon there was applause—more than she was used to—and she bowed her head and went down the steps. Gabriel stood in his customary position by the stage, and she noticed Raoul a few feet away, holding aloft a bouquet of yellow and white roses. She did not smile. She remembered her love for flower language—how romantic she'd always thought it, how charming she thought flowers were. Raoul had once given her candy tuft, and she barely spoke to him for a week after. This, however, seemed much more deliberate—yellow was joy and friendship (she hoped he did not mean the latter) and white, innocence and secrecy. She touched Gabriel's arm—he gave her a grin of yellowed teeth and cigarette smoke—and went to Raoul, a ghost of a smile passing across her face.

"Christine!" he was smiling brightly and he did not escape from resembling a puppy. "Here."

He handed her the flowers confidently and her smile grew. "They're lovely." she said, despite the previous week's threat of unemployment ringing in her ears. "Thanks."

"May I take you to lunch tomorrow?" he asked without ceremony. She looked at the flowers in her hands. They were thornless. She nodded. "Wonderful. I know just the place, too! Will I pick you up from your house?" She nodded again, and her smile was not fearful. She forgot her employer and his wrongful anger—what right had he to control who and what she spent her time with? "Wonderful! We'll have a swell time."

The word sounded strange in his voice. "Swell." she repeated with a grin.

"Well… you were wonderful tonight. Absolutely wonderful."

"You know any other words than that?"

"You were." he insisted, and the world froze for her as he lifted her knuckles to his lips and kissed them gently. Her stomach did backflips. "And it'll be wonderful when I see you tomorrow too."

She couldn't help but laugh. He looked earnestly into her eyes for a moment and she thought he might kiss her. But, as if collecting himself, he shook his head and stepped away.

"I won't keep you." he said, and she smiled gently at him.

"Thank you. Tomorrow, then?"

"I'll be there at one." he said.

"Wonderful."

He grinned. "Wonderful."

And she left the smoky bar for her dressing room.

x

"I dunno, sir."

Erik gave Gabriel a long, inspecting stare. He was one of his preferred employees for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that he knew when to keep his mouth shut. Now, however, was not one such time.

"You heard nothing?"

Gabriel looked uneasy for a long moment. "With all due respect, sir, is it really that bad if she—"

"Yes." Erik barked. "I refuse to have my… one of my most prized singers taken advantage of by some drooling idiot of a patron. She is very precious—" he seemed to check himself, and cleared his throat. "I, of course, by which I mean that her innocence is one of her greatest appeals—and I will not have any of it. That boy is irresponsible. He could be dangerous to her."

The employer turned away and with evident frustration poured himself a large drink. Taking three ungraceful glugs, he downed the whole drink and slammed it on his desk.

Gabriel raised his eyebrow. "I think I know what's going on here, sir."

With a surprising amount of anger in his voice, the masked man turned and intentionally knocked the empty tumbler that was sitting on his desk to the ground, where it did not break but instead bounced and rolled on the rich, thick carpet. "You know nothing." he said viciously, teeth bared in an almost animal fashion as he glanced furiously at the unbroken glass. "And you will say nothing."

"Yessir."

"And you will keep that boy away from Christine at all times. Do you understand me?"

"Yessir."

"Very well then."

He gestured to the door and Gabriel gave a sound of disapproval. "You're thinkin' of her best interests, right, sir? She's… young, an' a little naïve, you know."

Gabriel expected another round of angry stammering, but his boss just sighed tiredly, as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders. "I never think of anything else."

A moment passed between them, and Gabriel went towards the door. He heard his employer draw in a breath and paused, waiting to receive an order or a reprimand.

Nothing came, and Gabriel went.

x

(Pssssst. Reviews are cool and may or may not make me write a bit faster.)


	5. Chapter 5

Philippe de Chagny was nothing if not a man of taste—and he had chosen the woman he was currently on terms with excellently. She had to be the most beautiful creature in the city. It helped that he made sure that she was always decked out in the newest fashions, the best makeup, and the finest hairstyles, not to mention the ridiculous amount of jewellery. But it was the done thing to make sure that one's doll was well-dressed. And as well, her eyes were beautiful, and she was quite capable of assuring on her own that she was magnificently put together at all times.

Except for when she woke up in his bed on Sunday mornings with makeup smeared across her face, but it only served to bring out the green of her eyes and the pink of her lips. He could only imagine how gruff and ugly he must have looked compared to her in the mornings before having had coffee and a shave.

One such Sunday morning, when both had woken but had not yet risen, she rolled onto her side and looked at him very carefully. He raised an eyebrow.

"What is it?"

She took a breath. "I worry."

"About what?" he scratched at a spot behind his left ear.

"Your brother."

Philippe laughed. "My brother?"

"And Christine."

Now he groaned. "I don't even want to think about it. He'll do what he always does—he'll be fascinated for a few weeks and want to marry her and then he'll realise she's like all the other hussies he so hates and leave her alone."

Sorelli propped herself up on one elbow. "The runner of our fine establishment considers Christine an especial favourite." She gave a meaningful look.

"You mean he's sleeping with her?"

"No! No, Heavens, no. Christine would probably sooner die—I mean, you've seen her. She's every bit the virgin she looks."

"Wouldn't any woman sooner die? He's some sort of depraved freak, isn't he? A friend of mine, Joe, the one who owns the restaurant I took you to last week, he says that the man's mad."

Sorelli looked intensely uncomfortable, and leaned back against her pillow, crossing her arms across her chest. "Well, in any case, he's trying to buy her. She lacks for nothing. She has much nicer clothes than all of us. And her dressing room is bigger."

Philippe grinned and wrapped his arms around her waist. "You're just trying to get me to take you shopping again, is that it?"

They laughed, and the matter was promptly forgotten.

x

After morning mass, Raoul had rushed home and gone desperately through his clothing to find something appropriate to wear. He had never been on a lunch date before. He had never wanted to.

Black was completely out of the question. He did not like pinstripes, and he worried about choosing anything too dramatic. Performer though she was, Christine had always been of a quiet temperament. She would not want for him to draw excess attention; it was already likely he would be approached by some distant acquaintance who wanted to know where he'd found his charming date. He could hardly tell them the truth.

Raoul was a terrible liar.

He finally settled on a blue 'number' that Philippe had coerced him into buying for a party they'd been to the year before. It was nondescript enough, and went well with one of his umbrellas. The sky had been clear all morning, but he suspected it would not stay that way.

When he went into the kitchen, Philippe was sitting casually at the breakfast table with a steaming cup of black coffee in front of him. He was poring over yesterday's paper and apparently pretending that Sorelli was not in his bedroom.

"Where are you off to, little brother?" he asked, looking Raoul up and down with a characteristic raised eyebrow.

"Lunch," Raoul said, glancing out the window at the garden. Clouds were forming in the sky—light grey and reasonably innocuous, but it still made him uneasy. His first date with the girl of his dreams simply could not be rained out. He would not allow it.

"Ah, lunch," He was grinning. "Beating your gums with some silly doll from the club over expensive food, eh? Beautiful."

"She's not some silly doll. She's wonderful."

Philippe laughed. "I'll start planning the wedding while you're out."

Raoul blushed to the eyes and looked down in embarrassment. "Stop it," he said quietly.

"Aw, can't you handle a little teasing? Who's the lucky gal?"

"Miss Daaé."

"Christine? Again? Aren't you done with that yet?"

Raoul narrowed his eyes. "We're talking about long-winded affairs, are we? Well, then." He looked pointedly in the direction of Philippe's bedroom down the nearby hallway. "Aren't _you_ done with _that_ yet?"

"Yeesh!" Philippe muttered as Raoul went for the door.

Raoul turned in the open doorway. "Good day, Philippe," And, louder, he added: "Good day, Sorelli."

x

Christine grinned as she heard a knock at the door. She steadied herself before walking over to answer it, and forced the ridiculous smile off her face before opening it.

"Raoul," she said warmly. "How lovely to see you."

"And you," he said, discomfited by her formal greeting. He adjusted his jacket. Perhaps black wouldn't have been such a bad idea.

She was wearing pretty light pink and her blonde hair was tied in a loose knot at the nape of her neck with a white ribbon. She looked beautiful.

"So," she said, with a casual brushing back of a tendril of hair that had escaped the knot, "Where're you taking me?"

"Oh. Yes. Of course."

Despite what he had said to her the night before, he actually had no idea where to take her.

"Well…"

Joe's restaurant. Philippe had always recommended it. It wasn't too fancy a place. It wasn't too expensive, either: Raoul had remembered Christine's discomfort with even the mention of money, and above that, the idea of not working for things being given to her. This ideology was rather nonsensical to Raoul, but he did not begrudge her that she was raised differently to him, even though he did not understand it.

Joe's restaurant it was, then, and he would quietly settle the bill and ask her not to worry.

"Well?" Christine prompted, crossing her arms. He tried to smile.

"A friend of my brother's has a restaurant downtown. I think you'll like it."

She looked unimpressed, but took his arm when he accepted it and closed her door, locking it carefully, before they walked away.

x

Erik mused, watching her walk away with that ridiculous little boy, that it was a curious feeling to have one's heart stomped on by a careless fool of a girl and not to do a thing about it. He watched until the car pulled noisily away—he would always be more fond of horseback, but that was perhaps a symptom of growing up in another time and place.

When they were gone he went straight up to her front door and pulled out the duplicate key he'd made months ago. He did not really need the key, but he much preferred entering her house with some degree of honesty. It was bad enough that he was there at all.

When he opened the door, there was an overwhelming sense of her. He could still smell her perfume, which she had put on in the entrance hall to cover the scent of her morning coffee. Her Bible lay open in the kitchen; he flipped through it idly. If he was honest, he found her belief in God rather ridiculous. She knew the cruelties of life—she had, after all, been forced into working for him by her circumstances—and yet she chose to believe that a benevolent hand was guiding her along her path.

He had to chuckle—indeed there was such a hand, but it was currently flipping through her Bible, and did not belong to any supernatural being.

There were photographs of her father and her mother, framed and sitting on the kitchen windowsill. In the photograph, while he was a handsome man, her father looked older than his age, and tired. He had Christine's cheekbones and small, elegant nose. His hair, however, was a deep auburn, and in unruly ringlets about his face. He had a short, stubbly beard, and kind, bright eyes. There was much of Christine in him. However, her mother, clearly an exceptional beauty, looked much more like her. They had the same yellow-blonde hair and sweet blue eyes. But the woman in the photograph looked more angular; she was harsher than Christine, without Christine's brightness of spirit.

She seemed to have inherited the good qualities of both.

He wondered, however, whence she had inherited her glaring stupidity. He would not allow it to continue—he had only permitted it thus far because he had been deciding how best to handle the problem of the boy: the easiest solution was of course simply to kill him, but then how to explain that to Christine, or the man he hired? Then again, doing it himself was always so much more satisfying. He could get rid of the older brother too, and if Christine asked any questions he could inform her of the tragic accident. She was credulous enough to believe such a blatant lie, but…

The whole matter left a bitter taste in his mouth.

x

"And this fella tells me that he never wants to go steady with another gal again—and here we are anyway!"

Christine laughed genuinely, and Raoul loosened his tie slightly, gluing his eyes to the plate in front of him. Mr Buquet, the restaurateur, was a man that Christine had seen at No. 5 with Philippe a few times. He was charming, if a little bit too familiar with the dancers, and he had embarrassed Raoul so readily and with such innocent good humour that she could not bring herself to dislike him at all.

"Thank you, Joe," Raoul said firmly. "It was good to catch up, as always."

Mr Buquet laughed light-heartedly. "Alright, I can take a hint, pal. Good to see ya," He winked at Christine and continued, "Honoured, Miss Daaé, and I hope I get a chance to hear you warblin' again real soon."

She lowered her eyes. "Thank you, Mr Buquet."

"Goodbye," Raoul said, and Mr Buquet walked away to attend to his other customers. Raoul directed his attention back to Christine and looked at her in a way that made blood rush to her cheeks. His eyes were bright and clear, and she thought he was very handsome. She let a slight smile pass over her face before she forced herself to look down at her plate. He had remembered her soft spot for chocolate, and had insisted that she let him buy her dessert. She couldn't remember the last time that she had eaten so much in one meal.

"Can I tell you something?" Raoul asked her. She didn't look at him.

"I guess so."

"I missed you."

She smiled once more, against her better judgment. "I missed you too."

Her voice sounded more hollow than she had wanted. The smile fell from her face. Reminiscing had been lovely—he'd brought memories up that she had thought had been buried forever, and they'd laughed together like the children they had once been. But she thought about the future and her heart sank into her shoes. She did not want to lose her job, and she did not want to lose her friend. She couldn't very well weigh them against each other. And she certainly didn't want to know which would win.

"Your job seems interesting," he said uncertainly. "Don't you ever feel as if you're in danger?"

"No," she said, stabbing the gateau on her plate with her dessert fork. "My employer is very protective."

"He is?"

"Yeah. He makes sure I'm taken care of."

Raoul sipped his coffee. It was burnt. "I hope he doesn't… expect anything in return for his… generosity."

Christine gasped. "No!"

It came out louder and more vehement than she had expected; the old couple dining at the next table over gave her a sidelong glance. She made an irritated face and leaned closer to her friend over the table. "He wouldn't—he's a very good man, Raoul. He's a little odd and very… assertive, but he wouldn't hurt anyone, least of all me. I know that sounds strange, because of his—" She looked at the old couple, who had returned to their meals, "—line of work, but he truly isn't as bad as his reputation. People don't seem to understand him properly."

Raoul grinned. "That's the most you've said in one go all afternoon. I believe you."

"Good," she said.

They were quiet for a moment.

"May I ask a… delicate question?"

She blinked. "Yes."

"Your father… was it… er, protracted?"

Again she gave a small gasp, but it was sudden pain more than surprise.

"I… at first it was slow. But then one day I woke up, and I just… knew. He didn't suffer a lot."

"I'm sorry."

"It was a long time ago."

"So was my father. That doesn't mean that I love him any less."

She took a sip of water. "I wish we could have helped one another."

He placed his hand over hers where it rested on the white tablecloth. "You did help me, Christine. And I'm a little late, but now I can help you too."

He rubbed the back of her palm with his thumb. She withdrew her hand.

She took a large forkful of cake. It was decadent and rich and suddenly she felt relief at chewing it rather than talking. Handsome and kind though he was, Raoul assumed a level of familiarity that she'd never had with anyone but her father. And she liked him a great deal. But the ease with which he touched her made her uneasy. She was used to being ignored, and she was used to being looked at, and it had been her default reaction to embrace him when she first saw him after so many years apart. But the way he touched her hand made her feel things that she did not want to think about.

"Christine," She looked up at him. His eyes were gentle. "Thanks for coming out. I was worried you may not have made it."

She swallowed. "I wanted to come. It's just my… we aren't really… meant to see men in my—um, line of work."

He raised his eyebrows. "Why?"

"We're meant to have a certain… persona."

"But Sorelli and Philippe…?"

"Yes, but she's a dancer."

Raoul looked bewildered and as a consequence Christine lost faith in the credibility of her own lie. She didn't want to hurt him.

"Well, I… I can hardly keep my reputation of complete innocence if someone catches me necking with some boy on a street corner."

His eyes flashed with a mischievous grin and suddenly he pulled a pocketbook and a short pencil from inside his jacket and wrote something down. She cocked an eyebrow.

"What are you writing?"

"Hm?" His face was alight with barely concealed amusement. "Oh, nothing, just a reminder to myself."

Her discouraging frown cracked into the slightest smile. "Yes?"

He was grinning. He cleared his throat and held the pocketbook a few inches farther from his face, squinting as if it was difficult to read. "Don't get caught."

She hid her face in her hands. Her cheeks were flaming and he was laughing. She couldn't wipe the smile off her face for the rest of the afternoon.

x

He watched her go into her home with a grin on her face. She was beautiful when she smiled, but it left him shaking with fury. He managed to trail the boy to his home in a chauffeured car he kept nearby for just such an occasion as this—he had a few thousand dollars a week on top of his normal income in protection fees from various establishments, and so keeping his driver silent and on hand was an expense he was prepared for.

The Chagny house was what he expected—bland and bright with sprawling gardens and three cars sitting on the gravel driveway. Night was falling—it had not rained at all that day—and he sat, and watched the boy fairly skip up the front steps and into his home, and then he waited. He did not know what for, but whatever it was did not come.

Eventually, he dismissed the driver, who drove himself home and got out of the car without a single word, and took the car himself into a particularly disreputable part of town. He believed the women he saw were called 'quiffs' by some of the men in the circles in which he moved, but to him it was pointless to sugar-coat the fact that he paid women to sleep with him. They were what they were.

He paid double when they didn't mention the mask, and half when they did mention it, but still went through with it. When they didn't go through with it—or, much to his aggravation, tried to remove the mask—he would make threats until their faces went pale, and then force them to leave, turning to the drink to comfort him instead.

He preferred blondes, but he did not always have them. Sometimes it would be a redhead with vivid blue eyes, or a brunette with high cheekbones and a small, elegant nose. They were whispers of what he truly wanted, and he took them to fine hotels, imagining in a part of his brain that was utterly hidden and secret that it was her he was seducing. Every gentle kiss he pressed to their necks and prominent collarbones and pallid cheeks was meant for her; every time he brushed back their sweat-stringy hair he imagined her smiling with gentle, tired satisfaction.

That night, it happened to be a blonde that caught his eye. Taller, with broader shoulders and more flesh on her bones, and dirty, dead, hazel eyes. Her skin was a few shades too dark, too, but she looked young enough—only a few years over twenty. He was old enough to be her father still. She looked up at him as he approached, and smiled.

"Hi, mister."

Her teeth were yellow and crooked and she was halfway through a cigarette. He found himself repulsed. She leaned forward towards him.

"How much do you charge?"

She lowered her eyelashes in a manner she surely meant to be coquettish. "Straight to the point, hmm?"

He grabbed the wrist of the hand that held the cigarette and squeezed until she dropped it. "I asked a question."

She looked him up and down, and whispered an exorbitant sum in his ear. He rolled his eyes and sighed, before pointing towards his car. She followed obediently. He never asked for their names.

x


	6. Chapter 6

x

When Raoul got inside, he closed the front door, leaning his forehead against it for a moment and grinning—his cheeks were beginning to hurt, but he couldn't stop smiling even if his life depended on it. Turning, and pressing his back to the door, he looked around the entrance hall. It had never looked so bright and welcoming. Philippe had put on some record or another, and he could have danced through the house to its contagious beat. He sighed—it had gone well, and he'd forgotten how beautiful she was when she laughed. True, she was the same serious, quiet girl she'd always been, but he'd made her laugh and blush and talk rather freely. He was hopelessly attracted to her and blushed like a schoolgirl when he realised how close he'd come to humiliation in flirting with her. Indeed, when she'd been so inclined, she could have made him hide his face as she did a few hours earlier, when they were younger. But it did not seem that she was that girl any longer.

Raoul had never thought of marriage, of being in love, yet he felt a sense of everything falling correctly into place when he was with her—a childhood sweetheart would make a good wife, he thought, provided that she wasn't ever arrested for her involvement in a speakeasy.

This was no problem, Raoul told himself: he would simply ensure that she was never penalised in any way.

Very simple.

Philippe was alone now, drinking tea in the drawing room in the front of the house on the second level. Raoul found him and flopped happily into the armchair beside him, still unable to stop grinning.

Philippe glanced up and rolled his eyes. "Lunch was good, I take it," he said, turning back to the book he was reading.

"It was grand!" Raoul announced. "How can you be reading Nietzsche at a time like this?"

"After my brother has a successful date? Rather easily."

He turned the page.

Raoul sat impatiently, back straight as a ramrod, and looked intensely at his older brother until at last he sighed and put down the book, taking a moment to dog-ear the page first.

"Alright, fine. Tell me about it."

Raoul laughed giddily.

x

Christine had watched the car take Raoul away, and then practically danced into her small, suddenly austere-looking house. When the door was safely closed, and she was leaning against it to be sure, she held her face in her hands and made an inarticulate noise that she was very glad nobody heard. Once he had written that positively devilish note in his pocketbook, she had melted. She kept her reserved façade well—she hoped—but had wanted to dissolve completely into the giggles he'd so easily brought upon her when they were young.

She was stunned that she hadn't been able to recognise him the first time he approached her; there was so much that had not changed. He was still playful and mischievous, with that glint in his unchanged blue eyes when he knew he was going to get into trouble but didn't care. He still had a thoughtful look about him when he wasn't speaking, and his nose was almost exactly the same shape, only it was larger.

And she now had a distinct desire to kiss it.

But now that she thought of it, there was so much that had changed. His hair still flopped into his face when he grew animated in the telling of an anecdote, but he attempted to have it neat constantly. His once crooked teeth and smile were now straight and even and white. His skin was not the sun-kissed olive it had been, but much paler; he spent much more time indoors, she guessed. His face was more angular and his shoulders and chest broader and muscular, not to mention that he must have been around six feet tall. She was sure any woman would find him attractive.

And yet he was pursuing her.

Her face filled with heat.

She grinned as she moved into the kitchen, putting her purse down on the counter, and her smile fell. Her Bible was not there.

She had been going through her daily passages—she was currently reading the book of Psalms, and had come upon '_The Lord sitteth King for ever_'—when she had heard the knock at the door. In her enthusiasm, she was certain that she had left it behind, open to that same page, by the stove.

She had never heard of someone breaking into a house only to steal a Bible.

Choosing to think nothing of it, she picked up her purse and went to her bedroom to change—she had nowhere else to be that night, and her feet had been pinched by her shoes all afternoon. It was when she had tugged off her dress and was working at her slip that she saw it: her Bible, sitting on the end table beside her bed. She froze, her dress falling to the floor from her hand. She knew that she had not put it there; she had been fretting in the car to the restaurant over leaving it out.

She did not believe in ghosts. Spirits, perhaps, angels, yes, and all manner of faeries and goblins from the homelands of her parents. But the only monsters she had ever been raised to be wary of in America were men. She swallowed nervously. "Come out if you are here!" she said, and her voice trembled. "M-My neighbour has a gun!"

Nothing.

She sighed and pulled on her nightdress. Raoul had torn the page from his pocketbook, and added 'xoxo' and his name to the note he had written, then placed it in her hand. She smiled and pressed her lips to his name. It was very nice to have him back—it felt right in a way she couldn't explain. She fell onto her bed and looked at his handwriting. It was shockingly bad. His hand must have been shaking.

She blushed.

A few hours later, after thinking far too much, she fell asleep with the note still clutched to her chest.

x

Sorelli grinned.

"I think they're adorable!" she said to Meg, who was angrily polishing a pair of her shoes on the nearby sofa while Sorelli stretched on the floor. "Have you seen 'em talking yet?"

"Too busy doing my darn job," Meg grunted.

"Aww, have you got a crush on Raoul too?"

"Ha!" Meg barked. She rolled her eyes. "I just wish I had a pretty rich guy to take me out to lunch like you two. It'd help my purse out."

"But not Raoul?" Sorelli asked casually. Meg was too spirited and snappy for Raoul, though, she thought to herself. He was quiet a lot of the time, and would probably have no idea how to handle her brazen sense of humour and brashness.

"Nah," Meg said, and at that moment Christine walked into the room. She put her hand over her mouth as she put down the carpet bag carrying her dress by the vanity.

"What _is_ that?"

"Shoe polish!" chirped Meg. "Really clears the sinuses." She took a deep whiff and grinned.

Christine coughed as she made for the single window on the far end of the room, pushing it open as far as she could. A rush of cold air and the sound of rain suddenly poured into the room. She sighed. "Is it too much trouble to open a window if you have to do that in my room?"

"I was too busy being stunned by how grand it is!" Meg said, melodramatically pressing the back of her hand to her forehead. "Oh, Sorelli, isn't this room's beauty just _blinding_?"

"Oh, shut up," Christine replied.

"As I was saying," said Sorelli, winking at Meg, "Philippe was telling me all about what Raoul said about Christine on their little lunch date yesterday—"

"—What did he say?" Christine demanded suddenly, turning to face them. The dancers laughed.

"Oh, you know, that you're perfectly enchanting and he was very happy to have been able to ogle you for a few whole hours…"

Christine blushed. "He did not!"

"And that he's going to marry you one day, you know, the usual—Meg, I believe we should leave the lovebird alone to brood."

Grinning devilishly, the two dancers slipped out of the room.

Christine sighed as she moved to the vanity and sat down to put on her makeup. She was lifting the powder puff to her face when there was a knock on the door. She sighed with mild frustration.

"Yes?"

"'S me, miss," said Gabriel's welcome voice. Normally he was at the front door already, letting respectable patrons in and turning the rabble away. She told him to come in, and she smiled at him as he did, closing the door behind him, which gave her pause. "How're things, miss?" he said companionably, though he didn't give her the usual smile.

"Things are swell," she said quietly, beginning to apply her makeup despite his presence. "I met a man."

Gabriel cleared his throat uncomfortably—he'd never liked to hear any gruesome details of the girls' escapades. She grinned inwardly; if he had only known that she hadn't even kissed Raoul yet. "Ya did? Imagine that."

"He's wonderful. I think you'd really like him."

"That's your problem, miss, you think everybody'd like everybody."

"It wouldn't kill you to be a little bit optimistic now and then," Christine said haughtily, looking her powdered face over. She dabbed at a spot on her right temple. Gabriel did give a little smile then, and she almost sighed with relief.

"Anyways, miss, I'm here for a reason."

"Yes." She inclined her head while she met the eyes of his reflection in the mirror. "And that is?"

Gabriel looked down awkwardly. "The boss is askin' for ya."

"I go on in twenty minutes," she said, now feeling a sense of discomfort growing in the pit of her stomach. Normally she would see him a few hours before a performance; he didn't want her straining her voice and told her he should be very put out if he ever heard she'd been chatting within half an hour of when she had to go on. Surely he would not break his own rules.

"Yeah," said Gabriel woodenly. "Better hurry, then."

She put down her powder puff and smiled as she passed him. He put a hand on her shoulder to detain her as she put her hand on the doorknob. She did not turn.

"Sorry, miss," was all he said before she left the room.

x

When she knocked at her employer's door, he answered it in person. He had never done that before; previously he had told her to enter and been sitting at his desk. He must have been pacing. He looked her up and down appraisingly—judgmentally—and took her by her wrist into the room, slamming the door. He had never touched her before.

His hand was cold and clammy and shaking.

She pushed it away.

"What on earth is wrong with you?" she demanded. His eyes were blazing.

"What is wrong with _me?_ You, young lady, are what is wrong with me. Tell me, do you choose to intentionally disobey me, or are you simply stupid enough to believe that you can get away with it?"

She felt anger bubbling up in her stomach. "I am not stupid!"

"You could have fooled me," he said, moving to his desk and pouring what looked to Christine like an obscenely large glass of some sort of alcohol—she wasn't talented at distinguishing between them—and downing it before he continued to speak. Her face burned like he had slapped her. "If I can't trust you to obey me, why should I trust you to work for me at all?"

He paused; it seemed he genuinely expected a response. Christine grasped desperately for something to say, feeling the sting that one did after being struck. The air went out of her.

"Please," she managed to say feebly. "Please don't…"

"Perhaps you should have considered the consequences of your actions before you went after that boy of yours."

"He's just my friend," she insisted.

She thought of Raoul touching her hand, of the way he had held onto her fingers a moment longer than he had to when he had given her that silly note. She looked down at the carpet. "I swear. Please don't do this to me."

He laughed sardonically. "And what if I made the same request of you, Christine? Don't do this to _me_?"

Through the anger and the fear and the betrayal, she felt confusion. She bit her lip in silence, the heat of tears rising behind her eyes. There was shock rising in her throat like bile. She couldn't speak.

"I have nothing more to say to you," he fairly growled.

She looked up at him slowly. She'd never seen this side of her employer before—he'd always been gentle and sensible and good, and she was truly frightened. She had no other job to go to. There was nothing else she could do proficiently enough to be paid. Singing had kept her sane, as well as keeping a roof over her head. He did not meet her eyes.

"I want you out of here now."

"No," she said. She felt numb all of a sudden.

"Defying me again, are you?"

"I won't leave. I refuse."

He threw his glass without warning at the wall beside her. It shattered. So did she.

"You will leave now, and you will never come back."

Christine looked into his eyes—he did not look earnest or caring or kind any longer. He looked mad.

She slammed the door as she ran out of the room.

x

When she was rushing down the stairs from her dressing room after feverishly shoving into her carpet bag whatever she could find, she expected that she would have to face a throng of people wanting to know what had happened. She was prepared to ignore them and race out the door, never to return. But there was nobody there. The music had started up in the bar, a jaunty number that Sorelli and Meg and the other dancers were surely doing some saucy routine to, and she took the opportunity to go quickly towards the front door. Raoul and his brother were being admitted by a suddenly very quiet and subdued Gabriel, so that Christine nearly ran straight into Philippe's chest.

She bit her lip to hold back the tears her employer had almost made her shed as she looked into his kind eyes.

"I'm sorry, Mr de Chagny, please excuse me."

Philippe raised his eyebrows. "Are you not singing tonight, Miss Daaé? My brother will be very disappointed—"

"—Are you alright?" Raoul's brow wrinkled with concern as he pushed past his brother to speak to her. She looked into his eyes and the tears brimmed. It did not matter if they fell. It did not matter if her employer—ex-employer—saw.

He could not control her any longer.

"I—I need to speak with you." she said. "Would you walk me home?"

His eyes clouded, and he looked up at Philippe, who rolled his eyes with a mix of befuddlement and hilarity.

"You were only here to see her anyway," he said, and his mouth curled in amusement. Raoul offered Christine his arm, and heard his brother muttering something about 'boys and their fancies' as they left the club for the oppressive drizzle outside.

x

"He did _what?_" Raoul demanded, unintentionally angry. Christine had let herself cry when they had rounded the corner away from No. 5, and had only been able to collect herself when they were a few blocks away. They could have gotten a cab, but she insisted that she needed the air. The drizzle made her hair stick to her head.

"He warned me," she said tonelessly.

"And then fired you because you wanted to see a—a friend?" He cleared his throat.

She nodded, running a hand through her now-sodden hair. The ribbon securing it fell away. Raoul stopped to pick it up for her. She gave him a cursory smile that did not reach her eyes. "Fired me because I _saw_ a friend," she corrected. He made a sound of irritation.

"And what does he suppose you're going to do now, live on the streets?"

"I s'pose he doesn't care," she said. Just like most other people. She sniffed.

"You can—I—do you have enough money for rent?" She had only seen him in this state a few times before; he had turned red and been unable to speak without stuttering furiously when a woman in the town where they met called Christine and her father useless vagabonds, and another time when his sister Josephine had not so much as given a penny to a widow and her baby.

She barely noticed the impropriety of the question. "Even if I didn't, I wouldn't ask for your help. You know that."

"That doesn't mean I wouldn't help you," he replied, softening and offering her his arm again. She accepted it. It felt broad and warm and strong under her hands. "I don't suppose you could audition for—opera? Or something else with music?"

"I haven't sung classical music since I was 15," she said quietly. "There's no way I'd be good enough."

He looked like he was going to argue against her, but seemed to think better of it. "Then… you don't sew?" he asked.

"Remember when I tried to fix that rip in my father's shirt?"

Raoul grinned mischievously. "And tore it in half."

They smiled together.

"We'll find you something," he told her. "A city this big, there's bound to be someone who will pay you for something. I can always take you on as my personal companion."

She looked down, laughing quietly. "That is extremely inappropriate."

"I know," he said, and winked. She blushed.

"In all seriousness, Christine, I promise you won't be left alone. We'll find you something else to do—or—or…" He swallowed and looked away from her. His ears turned red.

They arrived after a few minutes of not altogether comfortable silence at her front door. She walked up the first two steps. He took her wrist and she turned in mild surprise to face him.

His hand was warm and soft and shaking.

She found herself blushing yet again.

"Sorry I made you miss your night out," she said. He smiled.

"Philippe was right, I was only there to see you."

They looked away from one another.

"Well…" she began awkwardly. "You did." A pause. "See me, I mean."

He exhaled, and his dopey smile grew. His hand now held hers. She felt very warm and wasn't one hundred per cent positive as to why. "I did," he said. They were eye-to-eye with him standing on the ground and her on the second step—she had never been tall enough to be at eye level with him, even when they were children. His eyes were shining. "I'm glad. At least this way I got to walk you home."

The loss of her job suddenly didn't sting so much when he was looking at her that way.

She was speechless. He brushed her hair back behind her ear.

"Don't think about that clown that fired you, alright? If he doesn't think you should live your own life, he isn't worthy of your time."

She thought he would be slow, and trembling, and gentle, but before she knew it she had thrown her arms around his neck and was kissing him.

One of his hands was on her waist, and inept though they both were, she would never have exchanged it for having her job back. Her stomach exploded with butterflies and her cheeks were burning, and when they drew away from one another, he leaned his forehead against hers. She let out a small breathless laugh.

"Finally," he said, and kissed her hand.

That night, she fell asleep easily, and dreamed of the town by the sea.

x

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